Work ongoing in Bull Arm, Hebron on track for 2017 first oil

The Hebron oil platform being constructed is still on track to produce first oil by the end of 2017, and work is still ongoing at what has become a floating construction site at Bull Arm.

Exxon Mobil took a group of reporters on a tour of the site Wednesday for a look at what's been completed.

The Hebron base was poured in a dry dock last year and then floated into deeper water in Bull Arm where the pouring of concrete is ongoing.

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So far, 50,000 cubic metres of concrete has been poured.

The column of the platform is 70 metres tall — 50 of those metres below the water's surface — and there's still 50 metres to go.

Geoff Parker, senior project manager, said there's still a lot of work to be done.

"Right now we have several operations ongoing. We have steel plates being put on the roof of the oil storage tanks and then down deep inside the GBS we have solid ballasts being placed to make the structure heavier so that it's very stable while it's floating," said Parker.

In a fabrication site in nearby Bull Arm, work continues on one of the structures that will be on the platform: the living quarters for crew.

The quarters, when completed, will be equivalent to a seven-storey hotel with all the amenities to make life comfortable for 220 offshore workers at Hebron.

Other topside structures are still being fabricated across the province as well as outside Canada.

Those pieces are scheduled to start arriving at the Bull Arm site this fall for assembly on shore, and will then be towed out to the platform in 2016.

Exxon Mobil plans to have the completed platform ready to be towed offshore to the Grand Banks in 2017.